A sorrowful sunset

This was written as a piece of flash fiction for a contest at helium.com. When I tried to submit it, it was rejected because it was too long. I endued up giving them an abbreviated, 400 word version.

They agreed to have one last meeting together to try to resolve their differences. That’s the way it is when you have been so deeply in love with someone, where you’ve been through such throes of ecstasy and agony together, that when it comes to the point where the agony becomes too difficult to endure any longer, you still feel that there could be one last chance to talk things out to see if the love could be rescued.

Gerald and Theresa had known each other since they were thirteen years old. They kissed underneath Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin one evening in mid August of ‘75. Their families had inconsequentially parked their campers next to each other in the K.O.A. campground. One evening their parents took everyone up to see the bats - yeah, it was one of those meetings you dream of as a teenager on vacation. Meeting a stranger in a strange place, deeply hoping they could be your soulmate.

They went home to their homes where they lived on opposite shores of the continent and ended up writing letters to each other every week through which they fell in love and planned a dreamlike future together. They were entirely oblivious to anyone else their own age in their physical worlds of high school and part time jobs.

Theresa had an aunt that lived outside of Austin and moved there after graduation to attend community college. Gerald saved all his earnings from summer jobs so that he could make the trip by Greyhound from Bakersfield to join her. Their first reunion was to be underneath the bridge.

Six years later Theresa had three kids, a job as a file clerk and a mildly beer-oholic husband that had broken his back bucking broncos. They were members of a small pentecostal church which was the only source of strength that Theresa had left to encourage her to believe that the struggle destiny had ushered her into would not end in ruin, and that the adventure she had chased after with such youthful glee could come back to life.

Gerald had never beaten her, or cheated on her (but she had done both sins against him). They were ferocious lovers in bed and fought aggressively for each other’s time and attention. They both had streaks of jealousy that could enrage into accusatory fights in public places where they both would be oblivious of their surroundings while accusing the other and defending themselves.  

It was Gerald’s inner demons of battling with uncontrolled manic depression that brought the couple their worst turmoil. She loved him so dangerously that she became his encourager, his supplier, and she thrived on the thrill of the extreme states of mania and depression he manifested. She fed off of him like a drug, which empowered his love for her but it only made him crazier.

He worked a slew of worthless jobs in pizza parlors, car washes, warehouses, as a pamphleteer, a dishwasher, none of which gave him any more self esteem than the feeling of getting a paycheck good enough to help out with the rent and food did. But getting fired for fights with staff or customers, or for drinking on the job ruined his reputation quickly. His high school ambitions of becoming a photojournalist were stymied because his mood swings seemed to be intensifying and he could not hold a job longer than two or three months at a time. Within a year after they got married the voices in his head began to speak louder.

Theresa wanted to follow in the footsteps of the tradition of the women in her family and become a music teacher. She was a virtuoso at piano and violin, a child prodigy. Transferring to the University of Texas after she finished at the community college to get a degree in music was the dream of her family. The first child was born too early for her. Kids shouldn’t marry when they are so young. Not when they have such grand ambitions for their lives. The power of chance meetings in K.O.A. campgrounds to foment into wild futures is like pouring kerosene on dry kindling over still warm embers . “What do you like to do?” he said to her under the bridge in ‘75. “I like to sing.” “I’m a writer”, he said.

He got pills for the mood swings. Lithium. When it calmed him down enough to keep him home from drinking binges with his two friends she was slightly relieved. He knew he was supposed to stop drinking entirely, and this was what she really hoped would be the miracle to bring peace to his soul. But the voices wouldn’t stop. She could tell because he started to go for long walks alone. He’d go out at night after the babies were put to sleep and sometimes would not come home until afternoon the next day. Sometimes he would not even make it home. She’d get a call from someone they knew who saw him. Or worse, the police would bring him home. He’d always say he knew where he was going but that he just “forgot how to get there”.

The children were their last saving grace. He loved the kids and was good with them most of the time, but when he mixed the Lithium with even a little bit of Lone Star he turned into a wild card. Would he be in a positive mood swing and play Pee Wee’s Playhouse with the kids while mom was at work or would it be a bad mood swing day in which it would turn into an episode of Friday night Creature Features.

The day had been thick with thunderstorms and twisters had been seen up north. She wanted to pick him up, to drive together to the bridge but he said that he would be there on time. She sat there for three hours. Watched crowds of tourists and locals come to see the bats fly out from underneath the bridge, just like they had so many times together before. She saw a young couple, couldn’t be more than fifteen years old, kissing. But she saw no lone man walking towards her. Darkness enshrouded her.